Almost everything built has to comply with some for of standards. Would you buy a car if it didn’t comply with design standards? Or a house? Or even a toaster?
There are standards for web sites as well. As it turns out, most sites don’t comply.
“Well, they all look okay” you might say. And it’s mostly true. Nobody is going to arrest you for having a website not built to standards.
Or are they?
The Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG)
Search Google for SOCOG. You’ll get this:
The first 3 results are about a legal battle regarding the SOCOG website – specifically it’s inaccessibility to a blind gentleman names Bruce Macguire. I won’t go into details here (you can read all about it elsewhere) but the point is this: Would you like your name to appear this way if someone was searching for you?
True, accessibility and web standards are not the same thing; but they are closely related.
Thus ends my first post about Web Essentials 04. When I translate the rest of my notes I might have some more! (Which is quite a feat if you’ve ever seen my handwriting.)
Postscript: There is at the very least one blind user you should worry about. His name is Google. Can’t see a thing, but he needs to access your website properly!